December 6, 1972, Wednesday

We marched to the Armory to pick up our rifles. We call them pieces. They don’t shoot, thank God. Apparently we are going to learn to march with our pieces. We can’t march now. It gets better. To the tune of “Anchors Away” we are going to learn how to perform with the rifles. We cleaned them, which was the easy part.

We were taught how to hold them. Like everything else around here we had to all hold them the exact same way. We need to learn a 15 or 20 points of reference routine. The finger placement, the spot of the barrel on a shoulder was the same with 84 sailors. When we touched it with our left hand it was at the same time on the same spot 84 times by 84 men. It goes on and on.

We have only practiced for 3 hours straight and I am wishing that these rifles could shoot bullets. It’s time to shoot any recruit that needs constant reminding that it’s their other left foot.

The CC has taken to marching us as far away from the other Company’s that he can. I think he is embarrassed. This navy boot camp borders the marine boot camp. We are separated by a fence. We often march over here to practice. On the other side the marines don’t pay attention to us. We have one CC per company. It looks like they have four stripes per company. I think their stripes scream louder than ours. We practice drills, they dig holes. When they have a deep hole they are told they dug it in the wrong spot, and it needs to be moved. I wonder if the CC marches over here to show us things could be worse.

I am still having trouble memorizing the General Orders. Luckily for me I have only been spot asked twice and they asked me to repeat order 5 both times. At any time we can be asked by any stripe. It’s like Catholic school and learning the Ten Commandments. Except the punishment then was writing them fifty times. Now it’s push-ups forever. I would rather do the push-up. Later.